Norweigian Infrastucture Compared to Irish

Hello 2D Person Below wrote: »

Never mind the money, Norway is decades ahead of us when it comes to the sheer planning/thinking/innovation. They look into the future and find new solutions.

We look to the past and implement ideas that other countries used about thirty years ago.

That's it exactly, decades, we can't look beyond Saturday week. Utterly depressing.

Hello 2D Person Below wrote: »

Never mind the money, Norway is decades ahead of us when it comes to the sheer planning/thinking/innovation. They look into the future and find new solutions.

And they are centuries ahead of us in therms of being a wealthy independent country, we are only a few generations on from being an asset stripped, genocide ravaged colony. Compared to most of the former British Empire we are well ahead of the curve.

Can we do better than currently; absolutely, is it realistic to be anywhere near the standard of the most advanced nation on the planet; no.

Vic_08 wrote: »

And that's on top of generating more than 100% of their domestic electricity supply from hydro, sure why can't the ESB send a lad down to Ardnacrusha to just make it work properly FFS.

Interesting until recently Norways hydro electricity was viewed as as the green battery of europe

https://industryeurope.com/pumped-hydropower-the-green-battery/

Seems like hydro electricity is now the bad boy according to a changing political scene ..

https://www.localfutures.org/dammed-good-questions-about-the-green-new-deal/

Hello 2D Person Below wrote: »

. We look to the past and implement ideas that other countries used about thirty years ago.

Very true, although we followed the UK with regard to dismantling our tram network just a few years after they dismantled theirs. Well done us! At least we're not stupid enough to follow them out of the EU.

wmahcm wrote: »

Ahh there's the bullshyte

Not at all.

The country ran deficits for about 7 years (quite apart from substantial bank bailouts as evidenced above)

Easily seen. The EBR (exchequer borrowing requirement) in those years was as high as 20bn in down years alone (majority for public services)

It's been a serious failing of some of our media not to correct the misperception of some that our national debt is down to the banks.

Any evidence you need on this, happy to provide links, sources etc.

wmahcm wrote: »

Yeah lets never look towards any better ways of managing or doing things . .wouldn't want to rock the nice cronie cartels would we.

The problem seems to be that your better way would involve us having loads of oil and other natural resources. The thing is, there's nothing we can do to make that happen. Other than to annex Norway. Which wouldn't work.

MrAbyss wrote: »

Same population. Has oil money alright. Even so. We get 50m trams on the Green Line from our politicians and are over the moon for it. BTW Norway has a superb rail system (building new lines all the time) and Oslo has an incredible commuter rail, tram and metro system. Same size as Dublin.

We get slightly longer trams and crayons for Renelagh.

Norway does not have a superb rail system. For example, the line between the two largest cities, Oslo and Bergen, is a single track that was constructed over a 100 years ago. The same largely apples to Oslo to Trondheim (3rd largest city). Both have journey times of 6-8 hours.

There's is not, and has never been, any direct connection between Bergen and Trondheim (which would likely take 8-10 hours if it did exist, assuming similar line), hence, to travel between those two, you need to go via Oslo (14 hours, say). By air, all these take about 45 mins.

That said, there are of course reasons, including the mountains, fjords, climate and wildlife. There'd be a need for many (likely record-breaking) tunnels and bridges to make these rail routes "superb". A new line to Bergen has been discussed for decades, but nothing fundamental has changed yet.

Admittedly, there is investment in rail in the larger Oslo area, including, but not limited to, the high-speed line to Gardermoen airport (20 mins, vs 40 mins by car largely on motorways). But "building new lines all the time" is not correct.

Norway does indeed invest in infrastructure at a different scale from Ireland, but also some things just cost so much more there (for example, it's never flat there, so everything requires expensive tunnels, etc.) that it's still lagging in terms of motorways too. There's no motorway connection between the largest cities, but there's certainly no lack of investigation in major projects otherwise (including a growing network of motorway around Oslo and generally in the east of the country in general).

Finally, just thought I'd mention the extremely high number (250+) of toll roads used to part-fund some of these projects.

Just to provide a bit of balance. A lot is certainly significantly better than in Ireland, but it's not all as it appears from the outside.

Edit: Indeed, public transport within and around Oslo (and other large cities) is miles ahead of anything that Ireland has to offer.